New!! The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments on the front page!

Livin'
With The Sims:
theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims,
asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual
life where everyone is Swedish?"

ife
sucks, shit happens, titles get delayed. Developers
have to be ruled with a stick and a checking account or they won't ship
anything. Publishers are greedy and will always compromise quality for
higher OEM sales. No matter which side you align with, as with any form
of art, the interests of the creative side do not always merge well
with the interests of business.

The Freedom

Freedom springs creativity
and gives room for totally original stuff that could not have been planned.
When you look at any of the great titles, whether it be Star Control
2, System Shock, or Half-Life, the end product is
as much a result of things done well, as it is the result of things
attempted, tested, and then crossed out. The whole process is non-linear
and for any particular step forward one sometimes take two steps back.
However, having complete freedom enslaves one as much as having a day-by-day
schedule: when everything is possible, nothing certain is done. If you
are familiar with East-European sci-fi tradition, you might remember
Stanislaw Lem's argument against the nation of geniuses being
able to do everything; they won't do anything. Why try if you already
know you can do it?

The Schedule

Precise planning leads to
predictability and creates foundation for expansion of business. Electronic
Arts, Eidos and Take-Two live by their flow charts. The better you schedule,
the better business plan you have to attract the next investment from
NationsBank, or a good recommendation from the analysts of London City.
Long-term credits, successful IPOs, and happy shareholders would not
be possible without proven quarterly results and justified positive
projections.

However, overtly predictable
scheduling destroys the creative model: "new" means "unknown and unknown
is far from predictable. While Deer Hunter III or NFS IV
might be the perfect cash cows, the progress of the industry at large
depends on the groundbreaking titles that help games evolve as a form
of entertainment. And, just like to justify a dozen of Peacemakers
there must be at least one Perfect World, to make room for a
dozen Abes there must be at least one Another World...

The Balance

So. With interests of publishing
coming across the principles of creative development and vice versa,
is there a way to come up with a successful development style that would
work equally well as a real-world business model?

Sure, and the recent years
demonstrate that there are solutions: despite the multitude of differences,
Final Fantasy VII is as good a game as Unreal. Now go
look at their development teams; I doubt you can find more diversity.

The final question seems
to be in the balance of power: the power of freedom and the power of
planning. Abandon any scheduling, and lose yourself on the road to nowhere.
Build a cage too tight, and indulge in mediocrity, betraying your artist's
soul. But master both and find the discipline. The discipline that will
set you free.

The Story

The story below is a story
about the particular balance we have found with our own project, started
back in '97. The road to glory was rough and with our present experience
we could have evaded some of the larger pitfalls, but we still believe
the end result was worth it.

Unlike issue #24's piece
on Rebel Boat Rocker, this is not a post-mortem; we're still
alive and kicking. :) Most of the people we meet say the days of evolving
projects are over. Some say small teams are long gone, too... However,
on a similar note, I happen to remember movie people being negative
about Pulp Fiction's budget as well. :)

The final message here is
that I don't think you have to hire 20 developers to build a good game
or borrow 40+ million dollars to make a decent movie: true, Titanics
and Final Fantasies happen, but there's always Railroad Tycoons
and Knights & Merchants being created by one or two-man teams.
In essence, your game depends on the balance you manage to reach, and
such a balance comes free from financial or numeric requirements.

Thus, without further ado,
let us begin:

Time & Place

The time was late spring
'97, the place Moscow, Russia. Minus 20 degrees Celsius in February,
heavy snowfalls in March. A vast pool of development talent and a place
of relatively low budgets, quite a number of workshops doing outsourcing
and graphics for European and American game houses and a dozen native
teams struggling to break into the world market on their own.

Check
out this shot from Warlord Vseslav.

Our studio had just finished
its first big title (an odd mix of action and tactics on hovercraft
and helicopters, who could guess where this kind of mix would lead to...
and signed a much bigger contract for a medieval RTS titled Warlord
Vseslav.

The Russian market was on
the rise and, having a stake in localization/publishing as well, we
did some good initial funding: $275K for a 16-month cycle, rather cool
for those days. And hey, we could recoup it from East-European sales
alone; three native titles had just grossed over $300K each on our territory
and the future looked brighter than the sun.

Target release date was set
for the second half of '98, but who could guess that 22 crunch months
later we'd be still adding new features, finishing yet another playable
demo, and meeting three potential publishers a month from all over the
world... Time to look at the starting position, then.

The Assets

From the very beginning,
we had great assets to go with the provided financial backup:

A great genius engineer who
did miracles with technology: in four weeks, we had a real 3D landscape
(the year was '97). One month later we had multiple alpha-channels,
then real-time lightning, then z-buffering for character items (so that
they could change their inventory parts on the fly), then a dozen of
other kickass features. A working prototype of the engine was up within
three months and it's still getting more features every passing day;
just added lightmapping two weeks ago...

An incredibly talented AI
programmer who did superb AI prototyping on Java. He later worked out
a unique RPG system and with his tremendous gaming experience was constantly
shooting out fresh concepts and ideas that were not just your nerdy
type with an MS in math who does smart stuff for his own sake, but an
addicted and passionate gamer who would play Final Fantasy Tactics
in Japanese with a dictionary running in the background :)

A very gifted master artist
who did superb texture and render work (just look at the screen below).
A man born to art, a man who got along perfectly with our designer and
took charge of the whole in-game world, making sure it was as alive
and believable as the one you see in your window.

Add here a fresh character
artist who in about a year got all of the necessary experience (sent
him to training 4 hours a day; he didn't seem to mind :), so that our
current animations are probably on par with Diablo II now, and
a designer/producer with the vision who took care of the storyline,
character bible, gameplay prototyping, and historical research (ever
wonder how many Russian books are out there about XI-century Europe?
:).